I am completely unmoved by the argument that if Amazon forces traditional publishers to sell books at lower costs, then the publishers will go away and we won?t have books anymore. Hogwash. The publishers built for a printed books world may go away, but their digital native versions will replace them.

Yes, it's time to trot out that obligatory William Gibson quote again:

"A middleman's business is to make himself a necessary evil." -- Neuromancer

There's certainly more than enough evil to go around here: Evil But Smart, represented by Amazon and its oppressive Kindle monoculture, vs. Evil And Flailingly Inept, aka Publishing's Big Six.